The Last Year of the War by Susan Meissner – 389 pages
Book Blurb:
Elise Sontag is a typical Iowa fourteen-year-old in 1943–aware of the war but distanced from its reach. Then her father, a legal U.S. resident for nearly two decades, is suddenly arrested on suspicion of being a Nazi sympathizer. The family is sent to an internment camp in Texas, where, behind the armed guards and barbed wire, Elise feels stripped of everything beloved and familiar, including her own identity.
The only thing that makes the camp bearable is meeting fellow internee Mariko Inoue, a Japanese-American teen from Los Angeles, whose friendship empowers Elise to believe the life she knew before the war will again be hers. Together in the desert wilderness, Elise and Mariko hold tight the dream of being young American women with a future beyond the fences.
My Review: 3.5 stars
The Last Year of the War is another notch in Susan Meissner’s belt of well-written, solid books. This is the sixth book that I’ve read by her, (amongst the tons she’s written) and in each I’ve learned something new. That’s the beauty of her books, nothing is repetitive and they all hold compelling storylines.
I had no idea that German Americans were sent to internment camps. How did I miss that in history class? I really enjoyed the deep-seated and ironic friendship between Elise, a German American girl, and Mariko, a Japanese American girl, that formed at the camp. While we learned a lot about Mariko and her family while at the camp, I wished the author gave us more information about her life after the camp as she did with Elise’s family. Her story, while back in war torn Germany, was quite impactful.
With that being said, I was glad to see them finally reach each other, yet there was a missing connection over the years that was absent for me. I just felt with that much of a bond and the technology advances over the years, this could’ve happened sooner.
I loved the concept of naming her dementia a woman’s name. She could always tell when “Agnes” was taking over. It was clever and understandable. Overall, I enjoyed this book a lot but admittedly found some areas where it lagged. I’m also guilty of reading a book simultaneously (one on kindle for nighttime, one in print for daytime) that had two friends separated for years after a beautiful and meaningful friendship. I did find myself feeling a bit overwhelmed with such similar situations with the main characters. I can totally see this being adapted into a film. Fingers crossed.
Quotes I liked:
We decide who and what we will love and who and what we will hate. We decide what we will do with the love and hate. Every day we decide. It was this that revealed who we were, not the color of our flesh or the shape of our eyes or the language we spoke.”
“It is this day you are living right now, this very day, that is yours to make of it what you will. So make it beautiful, if you can.”
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